TOWEL How could you be so sure such a man would take care of this baby?
BRIGHT SHIRT That’s a very good question, Towel. But trust Miss Glass to have worked it out. On her instructions, the nurse and the doctors took the baby and walked away. This was their hospital, they knew their way. Don’t ask me what they did next but they returned in a few hours to say that there was nothing to worry about. That the gentleman had taken the baby as his own and would be a loving father. They were sure of that.
BOOK Strange are the ways of the living, if you ask me.
WATCH No one asked you, Book. Let him finish.
BRIGHT SHIRT Well, once the baby was with the gentleman, all of us had to get to work.
TOWEL What kind of work? What did you do?
BRIGHT SHIRT That I can’t say, my lips are sealed. But I am happy to announce that it has gone as per plan. Perfect. And all because of Miss Glass. The baby is back with us now, with his mother. He came into our world just a few moments ago, delivered to us by the gentleman himself. The baby lived for almost a day. He saw the night, he saw the morning, he saw the afternoon, he saw the city. He was even named and he was loved. There was nothing more his mother had asked for.
BOOK But how did the baby come here? What happened when the gentleman took the baby home? Why did he take care of this baby? Why didn’t he just kill the baby as he killed the mother?
BRIGHT SHIRT That we shall never know until the gentleman himself tells us. If he ever does, that is.
WATCH Can you tell us who he was, describe him to us so we can know if it was A, B, C, or D?
BRIGHT SHIRT Who do you think it could be?
WATCH (After a long silence. ) If you ask me, I will say B, the one with the striped shirt. The one who just watched. Who watched me, who watched as Tariq’s mother was attacked, who watched as Abba’s daughter-in-law was killed. Maybe he has some goodness still left in him and that’s why he was a loving father. What do you think, Book?
BOOK I wish I could be as sure as you are. Towel, what about you?
TOWEL I don’t know, I can’t guess, they are all the same. Who was he, Bright Shirt?
BRIGHT SHIRT Sorry, I cannot tell. Strict orders from Miss Glass. That was the promise we made to ourselves, that if he took care of the baby, we would leave him alone.
BOOK So he gets away? He takes care of the baby for a few hours, and that too because he is made to think that the baby is his, a baby whose mother he and his friends kill. And he gets away? What about Tariq and his mother?
WATCH And Shabnam and her parents? What will you tell them?
BRIGHT SHIRT That Miss Glass will answer.
MISS GLASS (From off stage.) What about Tariq, Shabnam and Abba, the ones who live? If the world, as they say, is a small place, the city then should be much, much smaller. So we hope that one day the gentleman will see them in a crowd, like the one that waits on the cement divider outside his house every morning for the traffic to pass. Maybe their eyes will meet. But you were right, Book, strange are the ways of the living. We sent the gentleman several reminders of his guilt even as he took care of the baby; we sent him pictures of the three of you lying on the heap, we sent him the pictures that you see on stage. He looked and he looked but he did not see. We sent him messages detailing everything you three had told us and more. He read every word but he doesn’t admit it, even to himself. I doubt he ever will. It’s as if he has no memory of the three incidents, as if he went inside his own head and removed that part of his brain that recorded them.
WATCH So what purpose did the whole thing serve? Giving him the baby for a day and a night if he is never going to admit his guilt?
MISS GLASS The baby is one thing he cannot deny, he cannot forget. For one day and one night in this city on fire, he loved this baby because he thought it was his own, that he was the father. So he held it close, he took care of it, he travelled with it across the city. And now he knows who the baby is, how it was forced into the world of the living, how its mother was killed, how he had a hand in all this, whenever he thinks about that baby, he will have to think about the fire, about the killing. Every time he looks at his own baby, which we have learnt is safe in the hospital, he will remember this one. The one that was deformed, that had been burnt, whose skin around the forehead and the waist had been charred and was still fireproof. And yet he cannot talk about this to anyone; he has to carry the burden of a story he can never tell. A story of his love that carries, within it, the story of his hate. That, I guess, is justice. Not the best, not the cleanest, if you ask me, but I think it’s as good as we, the dead, can get.
BOOK Well, if you say so, Miss Glass. Watch, what do you think?
WATCH I wish Miss Glass could do something similar for Shabnam’s parents. And Tariq’s mother. Maybe they have wishes, too. Towel, you are the lucky one.
TOWEL I don’t understand many things, I am only a silly piece of fabric with a hole in the middle. But I am glad the baby got to live for a day, a mother’s wish was fulfilled. I told you the baby was alive.
BOOK Well, Towel, you were right. All I hope is that the gentleman is somewhere in the audience. Don’t tell us his name, keep his face in the dark, Bright Shirt, but I hope he got to hear all of us. That’s all that matters.
(The dazzling rainbow begins to dim and as it grows darker and darker, one by one, BOOK, WATCH, TOWEL slip off their chairs and fall into the water. BRIGHT SHIRT joins them, swimming in the water that’s risen so high it has flooded the space between the stage and the first row of red chairs. Four splashes, the curtains begin to fall. There is scattered applause, someone says don’t clap, the audience is on its feet, waiting to file out into The Hideout.)
24. Curtains
THAT’S what I told you right in the beginning, don’t listen to the dead, Do Not Listen To The Dead – whatever they tell you, however they tell you, sitting on stage or speaking off it, between the lines or in the footnotes, screaming or whispering, water rising or water falling, whatever fancy name or un-name they wish to go by. Because once you lend them your ears, which I clearly did, they will swallow you whole, from your head to your toe. Because all they want is to pit themselves against me and then ask you to choose, ask you to choose between the dead and me. That’s why I urged you, right in the beginning, to doubt dispute distort deny everything you hear, ninety-nine point nine nine per cent of it, bury it in the ground, cover it with gravel, dirt, dead leaves, shrivelled dry and rotting, turn away, never to look back, never ever, or pile it all in front and set it on fire, watch the flames in the night or freeze it under a glacier, white, hard and solid.
That’s why I ran.
And if running away makes you an accused, so be it. I didn’t care. Beginning with the night in Holy Angel, they had laid out a trap, lured me into it. They tracked me down, to my wife in the Maternity Ward, there, they say, they handed me the bundle, handed me Ithim, my penance baby, my punishment baby to take care of. For one day and one night and then to hand him back. They wrote on glass, they dragged me out of my home across a city on fire, with a false promise for a false child, they made me risk my life, they got objects to sit on chairs on a stage and talk, they even got a dead woman to pronounce me guilty, yes, a dead woman’s words, they said, I was ideal, he watched over our deaths, now he waits for birth, such fearful, graceful symmetry. Symmetry, my foot.
No, I wasn’t going to remain trapped in this any more.
No way.
That’s why I ran.
The curtains were still falling, Book, Watch, Towel and Bright Shirt had just slipped into the water, when I ran.
No one stopped me, no one followed, in fact, no one saw me in the dark as I tore through the flap at the tent entrance. No one heard me over the sound of the applause. At a distance, I could see the moonbeams on the rail tracks and what had seemed such a long journey hours ago, walking through water, suddenly seemed to have shrunk, both in time and in space. Maybe the night was dying and that’s why I could no longer see The
Hideout; there was neither water nor those houses of air or water lit by soft lights, none of the people swimming. There were no children playing on underwater swings, no birds swimming, no fish flying. I turned back and saw no tent, no naked lights on electric poles, not even the faintest sound of a crowd, no clapping no cheering.
Instead, the ground beneath me was dry and under my feet, I could feel the hard earth, the soft soil; the moon was dirty as it always is, gone was its sparkle, the plum sky was stained with grey.
No, this didn’t seem to be the place where I had landed just hours ago.
That’s why I ran.
I reached the railway tracks, I followed them, their glint in the dark my only guide. I stumbled over holes in the ground I couldn’t see, over boulders hiding; once or twice I fell, but with no weight on my back, with Ithim gone, with Ithim taken away, just the empty bag flapping behind me, it was as if I had wings.
I flew past villages fast asleep, past men, women and children huddled around their burnt-out huts, I heard their crying. I wanted to tell them, keep crying, collect your tears to fight the fire because there is no water, there is no Miss Glass, there is no Bright Shirt and there is no Hideout. Or if there is, go there, go play, go watch a circus, go watch Juggler, don’t just sit here and cry.
I reached what looked like a railway platform, empty except for a dog asleep under a lamp post. There was an iron bench on which I sat down to catch my breath; I watched trains stampede by, headed for the city, streaks of light in the dark, not one of them stopping. I walked right up to the edge of the platform and stood there letting one train pass me in a blur of noise and wind that fanned my face, dried my sweat, the clatter filling my ears and pushing out everything I had heard just moments ago. The trains may not have stopped but the rail tracks would certainly lead back to the city, they would take me home, I was sure of that. There was no doubt in my mind, none at all.
Train tracks follow a straight line.
That’s why I ran.
Following the tracks. How long I can’t say now with any confidence but the tracks soon veered off at an intersection where the hard uneven surface beneath gave way to a smooth metallic stretch; this was the road. And on either side the rolling night and, in the middle, a bus standing there, its engine still running, BACK TO TH CITY written on its side in huge black letters, the E missing, but each letter ringed with countless tiny bulbs twinkling in the dark. Like Diwali lights in the shops in the city. I boarded the bus, found a seat by the window, just as I had done this morning.
The train journey with Bright Shirt had taken about six hours and I expected the bus would take longer – but then I had already run a considerable distance. I tried to do the arithmetic in my head, distance, speed, time, but I soon gave up, closed my eyes and rested my head on the bars of the window, feeling the welcome shudder, the wind in my hair.
My mother was sitting next to me.
I am all right now, she said, the doctor was good, the scorpion is dead, look my fingers are now almost back to normal, the pain has gone, you held my wrist the whole night, you saved my life.
They are after me, I told her, they are after me, they are going to get me come what may, any which way.
And she said, no, don’t worry, I know them, we all live together, they can’t do anything, it’s just talk, you are safe.
She put her hands in mine, whispered in my ear as if I was a child again, tell me what happened that afternoon, try to remember, you always had such a good memory, remember how you came running home from school with the poem about the scorpion, how you remembered exactly what I had said those years ago (even I had forgotten it until you told me), so tell me what happened that afternoon, that evening and that night, before you went to the hospital with your wife.
With my mother back, I was a child again, seven or eight, nine or ten, unable to reach the light switch on the wall, and all I remembered was the night of the scorpion, the rain pouring, its spray on my face, Father’s umbrella in the veranda, and this time, I was the one lying on the floor, Mother holding my hands, my thumb and my fingers, pressing them hard, afraid that if she let go, the poison inside me would spread, green, black and yellow, the flash of diabolic tail in the dark room, Father telling her to wait for the morning, then saying he would fetch the doctor, I heard his voice, I heard the pounding of the hammer, the pounding of the scorpion, my arms are hurting, Mother’s pressing too hard and I hear her ask again, what about Ithim?
Yes, Ithim.
Yes, Mother, I brought him home, yes, I cleaned him up, I fed him with a dropper, I watched out for his tears, I covered him carefully, I kept him close to my chest as we travelled across the city, I played with him for about five minutes (he even sat on a bicycle in a park), but now he isn’t with me. They took him away and if they meant what they said, Mother, if they are all a lie, it means there is no Ithim, which means that all the hours at home, in the bus, in the city, in the trial room, in the cinema hall, in the railway station, in the train, were just shapes and shadows. It’s a good thing, Mother; now my wife and I can have a healthy child, you will have a beautiful grandchild, a Baby Sentence that makes perfect sense. No cylinder wrapped in flesh and skin, no vegetable, no insect, its legs and its antennae wrenched off. No caterpillar, no charred skin like a hat on his head. Now the nursery my wife has built will be used – everything in it, the toys will be grasped with little fingers, the handrails will be held with tiny hands and we will lift our child high above our shoulders so that he, a boy, or a she, a girl, can reach out and touch the flying fish, the swimming birds on the ceiling.
But Mother wasn’t listening; she had left, I could feel the poison inside me spreading, the entire bus was empty, and through the window I saw more villages, more fires, more tears, all speeding by, rushing as if it was their backwards momentum that was pushing the bus forward towards the city.
IT was early morning when I entered Holy Angel and the hospital had barely woken up from its sleep of last night. The tubelights in the lobby and the staircase hadn’t been switched off, their glare brighter than sunlight. I ran past sweepers, their eyes half open as they filled their buckets at the municipal tap in the lawn, I stood in line, I put my hand below the tap, I felt the water, this wasn’t a dream, I was awake.
I ran up the stairs, all six floors, I leaned forward to touch one of the steps, I felt the layer of dust, the cold of the marble, this wasn’t a dream, I was awake.
I ran past the morning-shift attendants, I brushed past them deliberately so I could smell their sweat, so I could see and touch their white smocks smudged with last night’s dirt, they were alive, they were not dead, this wasn’t a dream, I was awake.
I ran past a boy, about Tariq’s age, walking upstairs with the morning tea for the guards, kettle in one hand, a dozen small glasses on a plate balanced in the other. I touched him on the head, he turned to look, he smiled, I smiled back, he was alive, he was not dead, I was awake. I ran my fingers along the staircase wall, I scratched the plaster with my nails, it chipped, I was awake.
No, this wasn’t a dream.
I passed the man and the wife I had seen the night before, I stopped, I stood right in front of them, as if blocking their way. ‘Do you remember me?’ I asked. ‘I was the father waiting for my child and I saw you both, I saw your white plastic bag, between your feet. I saw you leaning your head on his shoulder, you were trying to sleep.’
The man and the woman looked at each other and then, with a gesture of her hand asking me to step aside, the woman continued walking, down the stairs. I wanted to follow them all the way to the exit, to their home and, if need be, I wanted them to touch me. To tell me I was awake, that they were not dead. But they had gone and there I was, in the lobby of the Maternity Ward.
The window I had stood at was still there, unchanged, thick dust still on the frame. The building right across the lawn was still there, the Burns Ward, but all its windows now reflected the first light of the day. I tried to locate Miss Glass�
��s room, fifth floor, thirteenth window from the corner, but all I could see was a strip of white, bright and shining.
I turned to head towards the Operating Theatre where, in a room next door, I had last seen my wife, where I had talked to Doctors 1 and 2, where Head Nurse had filled out the discharge form, where I had written down his name: Ithim. Yes, I must have that discharge form in my pocket and I would show it to the guard or the nurse but just as I turned from the window to take the first step I was struck by the silence in the Maternity Ward.
And in that silence, I saw the bodies.
THERE were so many that I had to walk on tiptoe to avoid touching them. They were on the floor, some resting against doors, some near the elevator entrance, others on the staircase landing, lining the nurses’ station. Bodies, all covered with winding sheets, factory-fresh white. (I saw the name of the mill from where this cloth had come, its blue ink imprint, its golden foil seal on the sheets, in some cases near the feet, in others near the head or right on the chest, like someone was stamping the dead: Made from Cotton 100%, Bleached Cambric, fully combed yarn. Texmark No 22. Silver Dew. Finley’s Sovereign Quality, Mohar Gold Mills (U.C.), Bombay 14. NTC, National Textiles Corporation.)
So white were these sheets – and made whiter under the tubelights – that my eyes would have hurt had it not been for the fact that the dazzle was offset by a softer shade: there were huge blocks of ice kept in between the bodies.
Fireproof Page 27
